“Have you lost your mind?” State Representative Rocky Adkins, a Democrat and one of Kentucky’s most powerful politicians, thundered at Michael G. Morris, the chairman of the plant’s operator,...
Hey Rocky turn your wrath in the right direction, it’s your party that’s causing this problem not American Electric Power!
Think that's hyperbole? Think again.
“Tacked up on the wall in a cramped office in Columbus, Ohio, that serves as the Midwest headquarters for the Sierra Club is a map of the United States with the headline “Coal Plants Under Target.” Dozens of color-coded pins form a giant U shape — from Minnesota, south to Missouri, east to Kentucky and then up to Ohio — with each marking a plant that the Sierra Club is determined to shut down.”
. . . switching from coal to cleaner, cheaper natural gas . . .But now, coal is in a corner. Across the United States, the industry is under siege, threatened by new regulations from Washington, environmentalists fortified by money from Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York City, and natural gas companies intent on capturing much of the nation’s energy market.
When you read about the natural gas market, you learn that at present NG is so plentiful that they just can’t sell enough of it to make it worthwhile to drill for it. Basically electric utilities are the core of the coal market, and the only disadvantage NG has over any other fuel is the difficulty in carrying enough of it to power transportation. But running a pipeline from a well to a stationary power plant is a cinch. If the market price per BTU of heat (measured as the lower heating value, without counting the heat of vaporization of the H2O product of combustion) for NG is gonna be lower than the price per BTU of coal, it’s pretty hard to see anyone making money mining (or, for that matter, transporting) coal.Pretty hard to envision any politician being able to promote a subsidy to keep producing coal, with its sulfur content and ash, after all the hard work that’s been put into demonizing carbon . . .
They will just convert to gas and everything will be ok. Well at least until the environmental nuts gin up a new study that says the NG is bad and then they will work to get the NG plants shut down. It is all a scam to destroy the economic might and freedom of the US. This is all about control and money for the environmentalists.
I have fond memories of growing up in small town U.S.A. in the 50s, when you did not heat your home indirectly with coal produced electricity, you heated it directly with the stuff.
Our coal bin was outside the house and it was my big brothers job to haul it in in buckets, I longed to be a big boy and get to carry in the coal, that is until I actually got the job and found out that it wasn’t all that much fun after all.
The smell of burning coal was all over town and it was a good and familiar smell, it meant the people inside those houses were warm even on the coldest days and nights.
Self preservation by the power company official. Obama has promised to destroy the coal industry; he’s just getting his company out in front before the carnage.